Organic electronics is an emerging field of technology which aims to realize low-cost and environmentally-friendly fabrication of electronic devices. Organic field effect transistors (“FETs”) are potential alternatives to amorphous silicon transistors, and may be useful for instance in relatively low-speed devices with utility as pixel drivers of active matrix displays and in radio frequency identification devices. Potential advantages to making organic FETs instead of silicon-based or other inorganic-based transistors include the possibilities of large-area and low-temperature processing, which may for example help enable fabrication of electronics on flexible plastic substrates.
Films of inorganic semiconductors are often brittle and inflexible such that their fabrication into devices may be carried out on rigid silicon wafers yielding devices that themselves are inflexible. Films formed from organic semiconductors, in contrast, are often bendable and flexible such that their fabrication into devices may potentially be carried out by continuous processes using, for example, a flexible web support body. The resulting devices themselves often also have the potential to be bendable and flexible, opening up possible end use applications that are often impracticable for inorganic semiconductor-based devices.
Continuous processes for the formation of devices incorporating organic semiconductors may include steps for printing the organic semiconductors onto a substrate. In order to carry out such printing steps in a continuous process, the organic semiconductor composition may need to be both compatible with a given printing process and compatible with the substrate on which the semiconductor composition is to be printed. For example, the organic semiconductor composition may need to have a viscosity or other physical properties that enable the organic semiconductor composition to be deposited by the continuous printing process onto a substrate and to adhere as intended to the substrate.
Accordingly, there is a need for new organic semiconductor compositions that may, for example, facilitate the printing of an organic semiconductor onto a substrate.